


five times erin thinks holtzmann is going to kiss her + one time she actually does

by untiltheveryend



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 16:13:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7647829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untiltheveryend/pseuds/untiltheveryend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erin turns to look at Holtzmann, who is already staring at her, weird yellow glasses pushed messily to the side. The part of Erin that likes order wants to take them and fold them carefully, tuck them into Holtzmann’s pocket. She realises that there is a distinct possibility she is blushing.</p>
<p>Holtzmann leans in, and Erin is suddenly, hopelessly, catastrophically sure that Holtzmann is going to kiss her. Right now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	five times erin thinks holtzmann is going to kiss her + one time she actually does

**Author's Note:**

> who the fuck even knows. 
> 
> this is entirely the fault of jillian holtzmann.

1.

They’re in the new lab, the breathily large one that Erin still only half believes is really theirs. Everytime she drops something, the echo of it is beautiful. 

The new lab is so big that it is easy to lose people in it. The first week, they play hide and seek. Patty claims a handicap because she is bigger than the rest of them, and then Abby chimes in too, so it really isn’t Erin’s fault that she ends up hiding under a desk. She only had ten seconds to hide.

Which is just about how long it takes for Holtzmann to find her. 

‘Hello,’ she sing-songs, her head appearing upside down over the edge of the desk, blonde curls bouncing wildly. ‘Mind if I join you?’

‘What- Why?’ Erin stammers. 

‘Hmm,’ says Holtzmann. ‘Cosy.’

There isn’t a lot of space under the desk. In fact, there is practically no space under the desk, not with two of them under there.

Erin turns to look at Holtzmann, who is already staring at her, weird yellow glasses pushed messily to the side. The part of Erin that likes order wants to take them and fold them carefully, tuck them into Holtzmann’s pocket. She realises that there is a distinct possibility she is blushing.

Holtzmann leans in, and Erin is suddenly, hopelessly, catastrophically sure that Holtzmann is going to kiss her. Right now. 

‘Gotta go,’ says Holtzman, and Erin is left with nothing but the sensation of whiplash and the ghost of Holtz’s lips against hers.

 

2.

‘Holtz,’ calls Abby. ‘Is this thing supposed to be smoking and emitting a tone somewhere in the range of 5000-6000 hz?’ 

Erin slouches on her desk chair and lets it spin slightly. She wonders if it is just her imagination, or if Holtzmann really has been avoiding her since the hide and seek Incident.

That is how Erin thinks of it. An Incident, with a capital letter and everything. 

‘Holtz?’ Abby calls again. ‘Kinda getting worried here!’

Erin sighs, and stands up. ‘I think I saw her heading for the garage a while ago. I’ll go look.’

‘Good idea,’ says Abby. And then yells, ‘Holtzy, if you’re hiding behind the transechoremorpheogram again trying to scare me it isn’t going to work!’

The garage is a loose term for a slightly undefinable space. It’s tucked around a corner at the back of the building, conveniently the spot closest to where they park the hearse between ghostbusting trips. Really it isn’t a garage though, it’s a workshop. And Erin normally has less than any idea what is being worked on. 

Today, however, there is no doubt. 

Holtzmann is head and shoulders deep under the car. There are no swear words or ominous clanking emerging. If it were anyone else, Erin would think they were hiding from her. 

‘Holtz?’ Erin asks, voice small.

‘Yo,’ Holtz says from under the car.

‘Oh, um. Abby is looking for you. Something about smoke and a high-frequency noise?’

There is silence from under the car, and then Holtzmann rolls out, unguarded and blinking in the sudden light. There is a smudge of grease on one of her cheeks.

‘I’ll go check that out.’ 

‘Wait,’ says Erin. ‘You’ve got, um-’

She steps in toward Holtzmann who stands perfectly still as Erin reaches out and wipes away the grease with her thumb. For a moment they simply stand there, an arms-length apart. 

And then Holtzmann takes a step towards her, and Erin is about to reach out again, but Holtz takes another step, sliding past Erin into the workshop.

She is definitely probably going nuts, Erin thinks.

 

3.

Getting locked in the broom closet together is definitely probably a bit much, Erin thinks. 

‘Abby?’ Erin calls through the door. ‘Patty? Come let us out, please!’

In the silence after her words, Erin is hyper-aware of the sound of Holtz’s breathing, a slightly slower rhythm than her own. 

‘I hate small spaces,’ Erin says in a small voice, slumping back against the wall. 

‘If you like, I can sing a song to distract you,’ Holtzmann offers, and Erin knows that she is incredibly serious. 

‘No, thanks,’ she says quietly. 

There is a pause. And then Holtzmann swipes a hand through her hair and crosses the tiny space to sit down next to Erin. This close, Erin can’t just hear Holtzmann’s breathing, she can feel it. 

‘The first time I met you I hated you,’ Holtzmann says. 

‘Oh,’ says Erin. 

‘I don’t hate you anymore,’ Holtz says, in that completely disarming way of hers. So honest that it knocks the breath out of Erin. 

‘Oh,’ says Erin, when there is air in her lungs again. 

They are face to face again, the third time in a week. Erin wonders if this is fate, or coincidence, or intention. 

Holtz licks her lips, the smallest of movements. Erin’s heart races. 

Muffled, through the door of the broom closet, the sound of Abby’s voice reaches them. 

‘Holtzy, Erin! Where are you two?’

‘In here,’ Holtzmann calls, face still inches from Erin’s. Neither of them move. ‘Let us out, let us out, wherever you are!’

 

4\. 

Abby’s birthday is their first opportunity to party since the four of them got thrown together by the threat of the end of the world. 

Patty supplies everything from party poppers to several bottles of tequila, because she is a miracle of a woman who knows somebody who knows every single person in the world. Erin tells her this, after consuming several shots of the increasingly good tequila.

Erin might never look at tequila the same way, ever again.

They dance a lot, Erin is very clear on that. 

It’s good dancing too, the kind where she forgets that she had edges, where she melts into the music and stops thinking about who is looking or what they think. When she looks up, Holtzmann is watching her, and Erin smiles. 

Eventually they get too drunk to dance without knocking things over, and they climb the stairs to the roof. It’s a slow journey. Erin decides to put her hands on the stairs as well as her feet. 

Just in case. 

Abby is clutching the bottle of tequila and refuses to put it down. Holtzmann walks behind them and mutters stuff under her breath that even Erin can’t make sense of, and Patty forges ahead to prop open the door. 

‘Wow,’ says Abby, when they reach the roof. 

The four of them stand for a moment, staring out at the city. They are over-warm and dishevelled. Erin has never felt further away from the version of herself that existed in high-school, the girl who let herself be defined by the way other people saw her and not the way she saw herself. 

She stands there and feels whole, and sure. 

So when Holtzman leans in, Erin leans in as well. Only it turns out that Holtzmann was leaning over to yank the tequila bottle out of Abby’s arms, and Erin’s face ends up mashing into Holtzmann’s bare shoulder. 

‘Y’alright there, Erin with an E?’ 

Erin doesn’t know if it’s an accident that Holtz’s hand tangles in her hair when she tilts Erin’s head back up, but purposeful or not, it causes the bottom of Erin’s stomach to summarily abandon her. 

 

5.

A couple weeks after Abby’s birthday, they are sat on the leather sofa - the one that Patty found on the sidewalk somewhere, and Erin insisted that they swab and run gels before anyone sat on - and Holtz starts quizzing Erin on cult movies.

She’s only seen the first handful - Pulp Fiction, Monty Python, The Breakfast Club and The Princess Bride. She’s also increasingly suspicious that this is a test, one that she is definitely starting to fail. 

‘Sharknado,’ Holtzmann says, in the same kind of voice Erin’s mother always used in church. ‘You’ve seen Sharknado, right?’

‘Uh,’ says Erin. ‘No?’

Which is how she ends up in her apartment on a Saturday night, watching Sharknado barely ten inches away from Jillian Holtzmann, who came armed with not only pringles but also actual food in the form of pizza. 

Erin is, she has to admit, kind of impressed. 

The movie is terrible. Truly, bloodcurdlingly awful. Somehow, Erin gets sucked in anyway.

They end up pressed against each other, Holtzmann’s head on Erin’s shoulder. 

‘You look tired,’ Holtzman says when the credits eventually roll. Her eyes are bleary and she is so soft like this. Erin doesn’t want to let it go. 

‘So do you,’ Erin says. ‘Sleep on the couch.’

Holtzmann just looks at her for a moment, and if Erin has learnt anything in the past few weeks it is to suppress expectations at every turn, but she really thinks that this might be the moment. And then Holtzman smiles and says, ‘Okay.’

And just like that, the moment is broken. 

 

+1.

Erin dreams about pancakes.

And then she wakes up, and for some reason the pancake-smell isn’t gone. 

Neither is Holtzmann, who appears in her bedroom door wearing yesterday's overalls tied around her waist and a t-shirt that Erin recognises. It’s one that her roommate at Princeton gave her, with the quadratic formula on it. 

Holtzmann is also holding, inexplicably, a dozen red roses.

‘I made pancakes,’ Holtzmann says, jarringly. ‘And these are for you.’ 

Erin stares, incredulous, at the bouquet that Holtz thrusts into her hands, and then sets it on her bedside table, putting aside one mystery to investigate another. 

Holtzmann is sat at Erin’s kitchen table, which is adorned with plates, cutlery and, yes, pancakes.

‘Um,’ says Erin.

‘Pancakes,’ Holtz says, ‘Look.’

Erin sits down and looks. And then, for want of anything else sensible to do, she eats.

When Holtzmann kisses her, it comes as a surprise.

They both taste like pancakes.

 

(Later, Erin coaxes Holtz back into bed with her and they tangle themselves together in the mess of sheets.

‘So,’ says Erin. ‘You don’t hate me, huh?’)


End file.
